You preach to me of laws, you tie my limbs

With rights and wrongs and arguments of good,

You choke my songs and fill my mouth with hymns,

You stop my heart and turn it into wood.

I serve not God, but make my idol fair

From clay of brown earth, painted bright with blood,

Dressed in sweet flesh and wonder of wild hair

By Beauty's fingers to her changing mood.

The long line of the sea, the straight horizon,

The toss of flowers, the prance of milky feet,

And moonlight clear as glass my great religion,

And sunrise falling on the quiet street.

The coloured crowd, the unrestrained, the gay,

And lovers in the secret sheets of night

Trembling like instruments of music, till the day

Stands marvelling at their sleeping bodies white.

Age creeps upon your timid little faces

Beneath each black umbrella sly and slow,

Proud in the unimportance of your places

You sit in twilight prophesying woe.

So dim and false and grey, take my compassion,

I from my pageant golden as the day

Pity your littleness from all my passion,

Leave you my sins to weep and whine away!

We are the caretakers of empty houses,

The moon leans her slender body against the door,

But the lock is jarred with rust.

The sun looks in through the window,

But its closed shutters are as blinded eyes.

Our souls are full of dead and beautiful things

Like bowls of potpourri,

A dust of petals

Rustling through the tired fingers of a ghost.

From far away the lost adventures gleam,

The print of childhood's feet that dance and run,

The love of her who showed me to the sun

In triumph of creation, who did seem

With vivid spirit like a rainbow stream

To paint the shells, young blossoms, one by one

Each strange and delicate toy, whose hands have spun

The woven cloth of wonder like a dream ...

The row of soldiered books, authority

Sharp as the scales I strummed upon the keys,

The priest who damned the things I dared not praise,

Rebellion, love made sad with mystery—

And like a firefly through the twilit trees

Romance, the golden play-boy of my days.

Give me, O God, the power of laughter still,

I shall have need of humour, deftest foil

Against the army of infuriated pride,

Against the shields of reason, and the spears

Of savage moments, sharp-edged bitterness;

Against the blazoned armour of intolerance,

And all the flags of sentiment waved aloft....

Love, Humour, and Rebellion, go with me,

Three musketeers of faithful following.

We will fear nothing.—Is not laughter brave,

That unconcerned goes rippling through despair?

Is not rebellion brave, that fiercely moves

Against the buttressed prisons of the world?

And is not love the bravest of them all,

So frail to hold his white hands up to Heaven

While the red fists are threatening all around,

And hate is beating on the battledrums?

As d'Artagnan upon a starved grey horse

Goes singing ballads on adventurous roads,

I ride my fancy blithely into danger

To throw my gauntlet at the feet of pride

And stick my roses in the cap of Love....

Winding down the street in wearied gaiety, the barrel-organ dribbled out its song

Merged with the thud of feet forever dallying indifferent and indefinite along.

The houses stood like rows of cripples, some paralysed, some hunch-backed and some bent with age,

They seemed at war, their chimneys threatening, their brows hung heavy in a sombre rage.

Crab-like the children crawled, while always hammering above their heads the scolding shrewish tongue;

They grew as bloodless flowers unflourishing, waxen and pale from out the dust and dung.

Above I saw the strip of sunset fluttering, even as washed-out rags upon the line,

I listened to the sparrows twittering, and the hours ticking in a slow decline.

Then beaded on the hem of evening, the coloured lights were threaded here and there,

Till proud with sweets and plumes and oranges, the shops grew brilliant in the tinsel glare.

Grey was the death-bed of the twilight, shuddering the faint hands of the day stretched to the night,

Fending it off, or feebly wavering over the pallid glints of stolen light.

And grey the faces that were gathering among the fallen ashes of the day,

And red the faces, yellow, flickering, under the lamps upon the long highway.

And some were gashed with smiles, and quaint grimaces of hate and pain and hunger and despair,

And some wore coloured hats and meek frivolities, limp ribbons, and false pansies in their hair,

But all were cold, and all seemed passionless; there shone no zest or splendour in their lives,

Nor hope in anything but holidays, or watching funerals, or taking wives.

Strange we so love the world—for presently, out of my window looking on the city,

I blessed the night, and the roofs slumbering all huddled, and I felt no shame nor pity

For all our dusty days of journeying amid the wreck and ruins of our dreams,

Meandering in a bleared forgetfulness, where lethe laps the wharf of sleeping streams.

I only breathed the air, intensified by the ascending breath of million lungs,

And heard the labouring metropolis, quickened by whispers of a million tongues;

And felt a king of splendid loneliness, and felt an atom of the peopled spaces,

And felt again my lordly egoism, one face distinct among the blur of faces.

Tranquility stirred by a sudden spasm,

Knives of rain that cut the silence,

Storms that rattle the bones of the forest,

Calm of the marble-terraced night

Charred with the spattering of rockets.

Drums will I hear and battles now,

And the long death howl of wolves by night,

Watching the moon on the forest tops,

Walking with delicate frightened steps

To the slaughter-house of a red sunrise.

I could explain

The complicated lore that drags the soul

From what shall profit him

To gild damnation with his choicest gold.

But you

Are poring over precious books and do not hear

Our plaintive, frivolous songs;

For we in stubborn vanity ascend

On ladders insecure,

Toward the tottering balconies

To serenade our painted paramours;

Caught by the lure of dangerous pale hands,

Oblivion's heavy lids on sleepless eyes

That cheat between unrest and false repose.

And we are haunted

By spectral Joy once murdered in a rage,

Now taking shape of Pleasure,

Disguised in many clothes and skilful masks.

I could disclose

The truth that hangs between our lies

And jostles sleep to semi-consciousness;

Truth, that stings like nettles

Our frail hands dare not pluck

From out our garden's terraced indolence.

We are not happy,

And you make us dumb with loving hands

Reproachful on our lips.

Nor can we sob our sorrows on your breast,

For we have bartered diamonds for glass,

Our tears for smiles,

Eternity for now.

I feel in me a manifold desire

From many lands and times and clamouring peoples,

And I the Queen

Of crowding vagabonds,

Ghosts of lost years in seeming fancy dress,

With pathos of torn laces

And broken swords;

Cut-throats and kings and poets

Who have loved me

In visions wild, not knowing

What I was.

In me no end

Even where the last content

Clasps on my head a crown

Of shining endurance—

I slip from all my robes

Into the rags of a tattered romance;

The stars crowd at the window,

Their jealous destiny

Raps at the door—

They bob and wink and leer,

And I must leave the lamplight for the road

To keep strange company.

Farewell and Hail!

Silence—

Somewhere on earth

There is a purpose that I miss or have forgotten.

The trees stand bolt upright

Like roofless pillars of a broken temple.

There is a purpose in Heaven,

But for me

Nothing.

I should like to say to the world:

I have launched my soul like a ship upon free waters;

Beautiful she stands in the docks with proud masts cutting the sky,

Perfectly poised, her white sails spreading like wings,

Her figurehead a woman with breasts that daunt the spray,

Her flag a flutter of coloured exuberance.

I should like to see her plunging out of the idle harbour

Where the sulky tide drifts scum, and the sailors wrangle and shout,

In a thunder of churning waves ramping before her like dappled stallions,

Blossoming behind her a field of etiolate lilies....

But to the mimicking, plotting, miserly, cynical,

To the rabble and gabble that dance and kill on the quay,

I can only say that my soul is a sleeping gondola

Lulled by a jester's mandolin, till night is atinkle with tunes

And lantern-lights, along the indolent backwaters.

You pass as in a drugged delirium

Wrought strange upon the mind's distraction;

You sing a blasphemous Te Deum

To harlot virgins, and a fraction

Of your fulginous colour passes,

Stains my spirit's great conception

As it dips into your glasses.

I that am the sole exception

To your stillborn, false devices,

I that know you, I that hate you,

I that drank now spit your vices

Through my loathing reinstate you;

Dive once more into the stagnance,

Kiss your cynic lips and drink you,

Concentrate your cruel fragrance,

Steal your flowers before I sink you,

Lift with hate instead of praises,

Show you honour of my scorning,

Garlanded you go to blazes

With my rhymes for your adorning!

O faces that look so coldly at me,

Colder than dawn through the windows of festival,

Colder than dawn with her grey nun's face.

You blame me, you curse me with your eyes,

While your lips are filled with flattering syllables,

With tinkling bells that harass my calm,

Disturb my silence and shatter my thoughts.

Your laughter waltzes like musical boxes,

How can I hear the triumphant symphonies?

The scarlet rhapsodies and beryl-cold sonatas? ...

Ah, strangers, ah, vacant tedious faces,

Bobbing beneath the feathery hats,

You have stolen the wings of birds for your garnishing,

And the stars and the dim pale petals of the sea

To make your breasts resplendent, to glitter your dress,—

How I might love you and weep for you,

Crowning your brows with a wreath of songs

If you could understand my singing,

If you could understand my love!

But you are waltzing with your marionettes

And marching to the music of the clock—

I cannot bear you to watch me

With those cold eyes through which I see,

Emptiness only and dust.

I see myself in many different dresses,

In many moods, and many different places;

All gold amid the grey where solemn faces

Are silence to my mirth—a flame that blesses

From yellow lamp the darkness which oppresses ...

Or mid the dancers in their trivial laces

Aloof, as in the ring a lion paces,

Disdainful of their slander or caresses.

I see myself the child of many races,

Poisoners, martyrs, harlots and princesses;

Within my soul a thousand weary traces

Of pain and joy and passionate excesses—

Eternal beauty that our brief love chases

With snatch of desperate hands and dying tresses.

There are songs enough of love, of joy, of grief:

Roads to the sunset, alleys to the moon;

Poems of the red rose and the golden leaf,

Fantastic faery and gay ballad tune.

The long road unto nothing I will sing,

Sing on one note, monotonous and dry,

Of sameness, calmness and the years that bring

No more emotion than the fear to die.

Grey house, grey house and after that grey house,

Another house as grey and steep and still:

An old cat tired of playing with a mouse,

A sick child tired of chasing down the hill.

Shuffle and hurry, idle feet, and slow,

Grim face and merry face, so ugly all!

Why do you hurry? Where is there to go?

Why are you shouting? Who is there to call?

Lovers still kissing, feverish to drain

Stale juices from the shrivelled fruit of lust:

A black umbrella held up in the rain,

The raindrops making patterns in the dust.

If this distaste I hold for fools is such,

Shall I not spit upon myself as well?

Do I not eat and drink and smile as much?

Do I not fatten also in this hell?

Sadness and joy—if they were melted up,

Things that were great—upon the fires of time

Drop but as soup in the accustomed cup,

Settle in stagnance, trickle into grime.

Faith, freedom, art that fire a man or two

And set him like a pilgrim on his way

With Beauty's face before him—what of you,

Priest, Butcher, Scholar, King, upon that day?

The dullard-masses that no god can save!

If I were God, to rise and strike you down

And break your churches in an angry wave

And make a furious bonfire of your town!

God in a coloured globe, alone and still,

Embroidering wonders with a fearless brain,

On loom of spaces measureless, to fill

The empty air with passion and with pain.

Emblazon all the heavens with desire

And Wisdom delved for in the depths of time—

Thoughts sculptured mountainous, and fancy's fire

Caught in the running swiftness of a rhyme.

Passion high-pedestalled, pangs turned to treasure,

Perfected and undone and built afresh

With concentrated agony and Pleasure ...

If I were God, and not a weight of flesh!

How often, when the thought of suicide

With ghostly weapon beckons us to die,

The ghosts of many foods alluring glide

On golden dishes, wine in purple tide

To drown our whim. Things danced before the eye

Like tasselled grapes to Tantalus: The sly

Blue of a curling trout, the battened pride

Of ham in frills, complacent quails that lie

Resigned to death like heroes—July peas,

Expectant bottles foaming at the brink—

White bread, and honey of the golden bees—

A peach with velvet coat, some prawns in pink,

A slice of beef carved deftly, Stilton cheese,

And cup where berries float and bubbles wink.